“The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”
— Socrates (Apology, 38a)
This website is managed by two people who have felt the need to keep track of, analyze, contextualize, share, and document news and commentary on important social, political, and ethical issues taking place in the world today. We both recognize that our world is a troubled place and acknowledge a responsibility to do what we reasonably can to improve it. First and foremost we see a need simply to understand what is happening in the world today. But understanding the most important issues of the day–things like war, poverty, environmental crisis–requires more than passive consumption of the daily news. One must first of all learn–through experience–what people and news sources are worth paying attention to; additionally, news and information must be contextualized and internalized in order to become meaningful. Having a correct or well-informed view on any particular issue of social or ethical significance seems to require having a coherent and well-founded global perspective.
This is the sort of perspective that we aspire to develop and strengthen in part through this blog. We use it mainly for our own purposes of keeping a record of important issues and events, but we have set it up so that others too may view it, share it, and comment on it. Socrates, after whom this site is indirectly named, said that the greatest good for a human is to converse daily about virtue. Such conversation, understood broadly to include all issues of ethical significance, may not be the greatest good, but it is most likely a prerequisite for the greater good of making this world a better place.